SUGGESTIONS: How would you renovate this bathroom?

Background:

- 1918 home, 2nd floor main bathroom
- bathroom last renovated in 1971
- will be gutting back to studs and starting new everything (including the window, vents, etc)
- floor joists are parallel to walls between window / door (i.e. up/down in picture) - as such, toilet must remain on same wall but I can move it anywhere up and down that wall
- bathtub in current location doesn't work - it's too darn small! A better spot for it would be parallel to the outside wall (window will be in bathtub)
- See attached image below for dimensions of room

What I'm looking for is some design decision with overall placement of the vanity + toilet + tub. If I put them all in a row in the current tub location, I will probably have to go with a much smaller vanity/toilet and flip door to open to other side. What about vanity on one side, and toilet on another? or ?? (something I didn't think about).

If you were trying to design a bathroom in this space.. how would you do it?

That is a 6.5 foot by 7.5 foot closet, by todays standards, could you steal some more footage from an adjoining room or a closet?

Gutting it is the best way to start, it gives you carte blanche to work with.
I still need to understand what existing plumbing is there, and how it is arranged to advise further. Your diagram is as plain as a dirty window.

The first thing that needs changing is the 24" door to 28", no matter what it takes, and go from there.

Impossible. The fun sizes you get in a 100 year old home in a semi-detached house in downtown Toronto! (the whole house sits on an 18' wide lot!) The door is not flush with the inside wall, it actually jets in about 8-12" and then you got the door. The bedroom on the left size is wider than the bathroom by those 8-12".

I would shift the sink a couple of feet further in to the room. Center it on the wall you have it on now. The sink up against the door will cause a very tight situation. Then you can widen the door. If you have the walls open it will not be hard to shift the sink plumbing a couple of feet. Also watch out that the sink is not too large for that little room.

It would be helpful to know more about your intended use of the bathroom to decide on the "best" layout... e.g., who uses this bathroom? Is it the only full bath in the house? Is keeping the tub mandatory? Is storage an issue (for this room or other rooms)? What does the rest of this floor look like? I'm not sure what you mean in your comment about the walls jetting out. It almost seems like you're describing the bathroom as not rectangular, but it's not drawn that way.

Attached is the best layout I could come up with without more information. It includes widening the door a couple of inches to the right. I put in 2 sinks because it was an awfully long vanity with just one, but of course you might not need/want 2. It also may not be able to be that long if it overlaps with the tub under more exact measurements. The x-ed out area in the upper left could be a number of different things depending on your needs... it could be a shelf at the end of the tub, a linen closet if you shorten the vanity, a closet for the bedroom on the other side. Or just an empty space.

The only other obvious thing you could do is put the sink on the same side as the toilet. It would be small but not unusably so, but then there'd be a lot of empty space on the opposite side of the bathroom - usually a bathroom in that configuration is only 5' wide. If you were willing to go with a (smallish) shower stall instead of a tub there might be a few more options, though not as many as there would be if you could move the toilet off that wall. The current layout wouldn't be so bad if you could move the door like a foot to the left and move the sink up to across from the toilet, but I gather moving the door like that is not an option.

Please note that I'm talking purely in terms of layout, not plumbing feasibility - I wouldn't know much about that.

The door and window are fixed because of design decisions / layout of the rest of the house (done almost 100 years ago) When I say the opening is 24" .. that's actually a 24" slab door. I can't widen it. Imagine there is a short 3' hallway on the other side of the door. The hallway width is only about 3" on each side of the "slab". Each side of this "hallway" is actually highly used closets of each bedroom that flank this bathroom.

The best design I came up with is as follows:

- The shower/tub will be on the long wall - left wall
- Toilet will remain where it is
- next to toilet will be vanity on long wall - right side
- A 1/3 wall will be build to alcove in the tub/shower - solid glass will close rest of 2/3 of wall
- BONUS: Window will not be in the tub/shower!

This will result in a space between tub and standard side vanity (22" deep, about 32" wide) of about 26". Is this enough space for a "galley" style bathroom?

Also, this is the main bathroom for a family of 4. In a "starter home" in Downtown Toronto. It seems every house on the street has at least 1 child under the age of 5. It will be real-estate suicide to not have working tub/shower on the same floor as bedrooms on my street.

Maybe you should hire a professional designer for this. You don't seem to understand what people are telling you. The 24" door absolutely can be changed.

I don't think you understand (sorry don't seem to be an ass.. I guess I didn't explain myself correctly) but structurally speaking, the 24" door CAN NOT change. Not without gutting the entire 2nd floor of my house. It's at the end of a 29" wide hallway that supports the roof!!!!

I know for some people here a 24" door might seem strange, but keep in mind:

- the house is almost 100 years old - 24" was standard for this area back then
- the house is 1200 square feet TOTAL
- it is on an 18' wide lot - inside wall to wall is 14' - narrow house (think NYC!)
- it is worth 3/4 of a million dollars

I was hopping to get advise given the outside restrictions of this bathroom can not change. Can we focus on the inside of this bathroom?

This is what I believe is another good plan. What do people think of this? I can always avoid the extra 2x4 wall if I put the plumbing on the inside wall, but how would that look? (i.e. spout, valve, and shower head all coming out of the 60" long side of the tub rather than end). Also, what about the space between vanity and tub? is that enough?